vCloud: VMware adapts to cloud computing

Virtualization has been the hottest trend in computer administration
for the past decade. And during the rush to virtualization, VMware has
stayed in top place despite strenuous efforts by competitors to unseat
it. So it seemed that the only threat to VMware could be a disruptive
innovation with a totally different model: cloud computing sites such
as Amazon's EC2 or (on a somewhat different level) Google's App
Engine.

Virtualization is basic to cloud vendors, of course (and VMware
competitor's Xen is reportedly very popular among these vendors) but
the market would still change radically if customers moved from
hosting their own virtual systems to using cloud vendors.

I should mention at this point that a dozen bad puns ran through my
mind as I was preparing this article. I decided to reject all of them
and stick to serious reporting. VMware's announcements in regard to
cloud computing a couple weeks ago represent an important industry
shift and deserve attention without trivializing. So this article lays
out the technical foundations and operation of vCloud. At the end, you
can think up your own cloud-related puns, and keep them to yourself.

From the standpoint of innovation in virtualization, cloud computing
can be seen as a natural evolution. VMware can offer it as a
technology both for services and for sites who just want a more robust
and geographically distributed implementation of virtualization on
their internal servers.

But cloud computing also has broader implications for companies such
as VMware. Right now there are heavy debates over whether you can
really save money by putting your assets in the cloud; it's clearly
cost-effective (and headache-relieving) at low levels of use and sucks
up your money at high levels, but the location of the dividing line is
unclear. As the vendors learn more about the business model, however,
that dividing line is likely to move up, as with all disruptive
technologies. And what happens to any administrative software
provider, including VMware, if large numbers of major companies move
to the cloud?

The recent vCloud announcement, coinciding with
VMWorld conference,
shows why VMware manages to keep its top place. Like Constantine and
Christianity (I'm just talking history here; don't drag me into
religious disputes), VMware isn't fighting the cloud but taking
control of it.

vCloud allows customer sites to interact with multiple cloud vendors,
using tools both from VMware and third-party partners. In a few
months an API will follow (and this API is promised to be simpler than
the current VI API).

From virtual machines to virtual applications

I talked on the phone this week to William Shelton, Director of Cloud
Computing and Virtual Appliances at VMware. He described an evolution
from bundling virtual machines to bundling virtual appliances (which
can easily be copied and redeployed in order to handle fail-over or
clustering) and now to virtual applications or "VApps." The VApp is
the basis for making easier use of clouds.

A VApp can contain several virtual machines, so that you can bundle a
cluster of database servers with a front-end web server and a reverse
proxy and move them all into a cloud. Each participating cloud vendor
will support the RESTful API that lets you insert and extract a VApp.

But VMware doesn't just want to streamline what cloud vendors already
do; they want to add value. They're doing this through tools called
Cloud vServices. Two such tools mentioned by Shelton are a charge-back
system, which lets a cloud bill a customer in a standardized way, and
an SLA tracking tool that I predict will be much appreciated.

Supposedly, SLA tracking will take you beyond the questions of how
much disk space and CPU you're using, and actually tell you how well
your web server responded to a flood of requests. Tracking won't do
capacity planning for you, but it can help warn you when you need to
add capacity. (I'll indulge myself here with a plug for a new O'Reilly
book,
The Art of Capacity Planning,
that includes a section on virtualization and clouds.)

Shelton refers to the charge-back system and SLA tracking as examples
of "plumbing" that VMware is adding to make it better suited as a
cloud substrate.

A vCloud API is currently being designed in conjunction with several
industry representatives. Shelton says that VMware knows how complex
it is to program the current VI API, which is SOAP-based. So the
vCloud API will be REST-based, rendering it much simpler to use and
better suited for exposure over public Internet if desired.

Another important goal of the vCLoud API is to present the underlying
infrastructure at a high level of abstraction, appropriate for highly
scaleable cloud computing solutions. The client of the API is
abstracted from the physical artifacts of the data center and from all
artifacts of the VMware virtual infrastructure components, such as the
VirtualCenter, resource pools, and clusters. Note that the current VI
API allows you to send each request only to a single server, although
if the server is a VirtualCenter it can control all the servers under
it. In contrast, the vCloud API can truly function at a cloud level.

The vCloud API should expose everything vCloud covers: provisioning
and extracting VApps, reporting SLA tracking, and so forth. Expect API
documentation in Q1 of 2009 and vendor implementations
during 2009.

Although VApps follow the
Open Virtualization Format (OVF)
standard, they reflect very specific VMware features and therefore are
expected to be implemented only on VMware systems. Thus, VMware is
marketing vCloud to vendors who run VMware on their servers.

So in a nutshell, that's what vCloud offers. Now let's look at a bit
of the implementation.

Formats and tools

VMware's older bundle, the virtual appliance, included not only a
snapshot of a running system--sufficient to set up a server that picks
up where it left off on the old physical machine--but policies that
make sure installation and deployment work the way you want. The
policies in a virtual appliance describe such things as the
manufacturer and version of virtualizaiton software you need, the disk
format you want to run on, the amount of CPU you want, license
information, and so on. All this information is encapsulated in an XML
file and follows the OVF.

Partnering is critical to vCloud deployment. On the vendor side,
VMware is working with a large collection of partners--the vast
majority of whom have shown interest in vCloud--to offer services over
it. On the format side, by supporting a standard XML format, VMware
can interoperate with other management services such as
rPath.

Naturally, VMware also plans to compete on the basis of ease of
administration, which includes the ease of moving existing
applications into the cloud without requiring application rewrite. An
upcoming version of VMware Studio will support vCloud by letting
administrators create a vApp with one click and move virtual machines
into it with drag-and-drop. Changes to VMware Studio will arrive to
market in conjunction with the next release of their VI platform,
slated for 2009.

VMware in the cloud

Shelton stressed to me that VMware could have taken the route of
setting up its own physical data centers and offering cloud computing
itself, as many other services have done. But they chose instead to
continue working with their partners and add value to what cloud
computing services offer.

Technically, the vCloud promise of giving you interoperability and
the chance to switch cloud vendors follows the path pioneered by
Cleversafe,
a company I
profiled in 2006.
Our data is less subject to arbitrary legal and privacy risks if we
spread it around.

To my mind, vCloud is intended to let VMware insert itself as the
intermediator between vendors and customers alike, thus keeping its
relevance in the cloud computing age. Shelton, however, claims that
"We are entirely focused on enablement, not intermediation. VMware
will operate entirely 'out of band' in relation to transactions,
migrations, and other arrangements enterprises and service providers
who are part of vCloud ecosystem."

Economically, vCloud represents a familiar activity found in many
industries. Every company would like to introduce some regularity and
predictability into its relationships with suppliers. But Shelton said
VMware is trying to be careful not to introduce too much
standardization. They don't want to cut off innovation or leave their
partners without a way to differentiate themselves. But if vCloud is
successful, it will make clouds more responsive to user needs, as well
as keeping VMware relevant.